Young Lions Roar (2 page)

Her companion chuckled good-naturedly. “Hello, Fritz. My name is Archie Leon.”

Niebergall was gradually becoming aware that he was in a large concrete block building with a curved corrugated iron roof. He was also aware that he was lying propped up on a pile of straw on
the floor so that he could see his interrogators. He was also aware that the straw was soiled with a matted mixture of urine, vomit and excrement. His own corrupt bodily fluids.

“I’m going to tell you three things, Fritz, that I want you to remember, so pay attention. The first thing is that I’m a pig farmer.” Leon held up his fingers as he
counted.

Niebergall looked at Leon in blank bewilderment.

“Contrary to what most people think, the domestic pig, or to use its Latin name, the Sus Scrofa, is a very intelligent and adaptable animal. Pigs are omnivores rather than herbivores. They
will eat just about anything including grass, vegetables, plants, snakes and lizards and so on and so on. You name it, they’ll eat it. I bet you didn’t know that, did you, Fritz?”
Leon flashed a full set of gum-lined hyena like teeth.

Niebergall shook his head. “No, Mr Leon, I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t think so, Martin. But please, call me Archie. You don’t mind me calling you Martin, do you? After all, I feel like I know you so well already.”

“You can call me Susan if it makes you happy, Mr… Archie.”

Leon slapped his thigh and chuckled. “I like this man, Miss Roberts. I know that he’s a murdering Nazi bastard, but he’s got guts and guts go a long way. Talk about laughing in
the face of death.” Leon shook his head in admiration.

“Yes, Mr Leon. I’m glad I wore my corset this morning or I fear that my sides would split from laughing so much,” Alice said dryly.

“Now, now, Miss Roberts, we must always keep our sense of humour,” Leon scolded jokingly with a wagging finger. “The second thing I want you to remember is that although I give
the impression that I am a salt of the earth country bumpkin, I like to flatter myself that I am a bon viveur and a raconteur and I am, in my own small way, a patron of the arts. Did you know that
I co-sponsored the recent Cambridge production of my favourite musical, Sweeney Todd?”

“The demon barber of Fleet Street?” Niebergall had seen the production himself with some fellow officers. In fact he had seen it twice as the horror story appealed to his morbid and
macabre sense of humour.

Leon slapped his thigh again. “The very same! You see, Miss Roberts? Martin is not a complete and utter philistine! There’s hope for the boy yet! He is not completely beyond
redemption!”

Niebergall allowed a glimmer of a smile to ghost across his lips for the first time. What did the ‘Escape and Evasion’ manual suggest? Try to build up a rapport with your captor?
Well, he was certainly well on his way to doing that.

Leon threw a handful of shiny pieces of metal onto Niebergall’s lap. They looked strangely familiar but Niebergall couldn’t identify them.

“What were their names again, Miss Roberts?” Leon asked rhetorically.

“Hotz, von Choltitz. Sound familiar, Niebergall? Rapists one and all. Those are fillings, Niebergall,” Alice explained. “Those are all that the pigs left of your
men…”

Niebergall recoiled in disgust as he unsuccessfully tried to heave the grisly mementoes off his lap.

“The third thing that you must remember is that Edward Cobb, the man that you murdered yesterday, was my brother in law,” Leon’s face was as cold as that of an iceberg.
“And Maria Cobb was my sister.”

Niebergall vomited violently.

“The only difference between what happened to your men and what is about to happen to you, Niebergall, is that your men were already dead when my pigs ate them, where as you will be very
much alive…” Leon let the full horror of his words sink in.

Niebergall’s bowels erupted in a tidal wave of faeces.

“The pigs are going to eat you alive, Niebergall…”

“No! For the love of God…!”

“I’d like to promise you that it will be a quick and painless death, but that would be a complete and utter lie so I won’t…”

“No, please…!”

“You will probably still be alive as they eat your balls and intestines…”

“Nein! Nein! Bitte… bitte…!” Niebergall pleaded desperately through tear-filled eyes as he struggled futilely against the heavy chains that secured him to the
floor.

“And then the cherry on the cake, so to speak, is that after the pigs have eaten you we are going to slaughter them and sell the bacon, ham, pork chops and pork pies to your
countrymen…”

“How could you lose a whole patrol?” Sturmbannführer Norbert Ulrich shook his head in disbelief, as he leaned on his clench-fisted knuckles on his desk.

“Strictly speaking, they weren’t my patrol, sir,” Obersturmführer Monat stood at a rigid position of attention looking at a portrait of Adolf Hitler above Ulrich’s
head. “Obersturmführer Niebergall was in command of the patrol and he asked me to accompany him…”

“On whose orders?” Ulrich interrupted.

“Sir?” Monat asked in genuine confusion. “I’m afraid that I don’t understand…”

“Who gave Niebergall the orders to take an entire neighbourhood hostage?” Ulrich asked with mounting impatience and anger.

“Well, it’s standard procedure to take one hundred civilians into protective custody every time one of our men is murdered, sir… I just assumed…”

“When you “assume” something you make an ass out of you and me.”

“I’m sorry, sir…?”

“Never mind, Monat,” Ulrich waved his hand dismissively. Pearls before swine, he thought to himself.

“You didn’t give any such order, sir?”

“No, Obersturmführer Monat, I most certainly did not.”

“Ah…”

“Yes, Monat. ‘Ah…’ The penny drops,” Ulrich said menacingly. “Obersturmführer Niebergall was carrying out an independent Search and Destroy mission in
revenge for the deaths of most of his platoon who were killed in the St George’s Day Massacre. Do you agree with my assessment of the situation so far?”

“Yes, sir…”

“And you were naïve and stupid enough to go along with his one-man vigilante operation without making sure that he had the necessary authorisation?” Ulrich asked
rhetorically.

“Yes, sir,”

Ulrich unscrewed the cap of his bottle of Whyte and Mackay whiskey, slowly poured himself a dram, and swung idly from side to side in his padded leather chair. “Whatever am I going to do
with you, Monat?”

Ulrich watched as Monat gulped. He was certain that Monat’s throat would be as dry as the Sahara desert.

“ I mean, technically speaking you haven’t exactly disobeyed an order as you were not in fact given any order… technically speaking…”

Ulrich looked up at Monat who had resumed his position of staring at the picture of the Führer. He watched as a bead of sweat slowly ran down Monat’s face from his temple to his chin.
Ulrich smiled as he imagined how sweaty the palms of Monat’s hands must be, as he deliberately made him squirm and suffer…

“On the other hand, I don’t want a loose cannon under my command waging a one-man war on his own…”

“If you give me another chance I promise that I won’t disappoint you, sir,” Monat blurted out before he could stop himself.

Ulrich paused dramatically.

“You better not, Monat, or I will have you shipped back to garrison duty in Berlin so fast that it will make your head swim. Understand?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I sincerely hope so for your own sake. Don’t give me cause to regret my decision to give you a second chance. Return to your duties, Obersturmführer Monat.
Dismissed!”

“Yes, sir! I won’t let you down, sir! Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler!”

Ulrich chuckled to himself, shook his head in amusement and took another sip of whiskey as he watched Monat virtually float out of his office with relief. Ulrich patted his stomach. All of this
empire building had made him feel rather peckish. He reached for another one of the exceedingly good pork pies that were arranged in a pyramid on a plate on his desk. He must remember to pass his
recommendations through Alice to the farm butcher who made them.

“Mission accomplished?” Sam asked as his sister walked through the front door.

“Mission accomplished,” Alice said as she slumped down wearily on top of a sofa.

“Did he talk?” Alan asked.

“Niebergall? Well, he knew that he was going to die, but we gave him the chance to die hard or to die easy. What choice do you think he made?”

“To die easy,” Alan answered.

“Of course he did,” Alice nodded. “As would any of us in a similar situation.”

“I know that I would,” Sam agreed. “I’d give both of you up to the Gestapo as soon as they allowed a pig to start tickling my toes.”

“Well, let’s just be grateful that the Gestapo haven’t stumbled across that particular torture technique. As for Niebergall, he sang like a canary,” Alice chuckled as she
slung her legs over the arm of the settee. “At the end he would have admitted that he wore lady’s underwear.”

“Did he say anything interesting?” Alan continued.

“Yes, he did.” Alice sat bolt upright, suddenly deadly serious. “We’ve got to let Edinburgh know right away.”

“Percy has informed us that the ‘Triple S’ has started carrying out intensive Brigade scale river crossing exercises at the mouth of the Great Ouse River
where it meets the Wash at King’s Lynn,” Brigadier John Daylesford said as he passed the decoded message to Peter Ansett.

“How many independent sources have confirmed the report, sir?” Ansett asked as he read the message.

“Two.” Daylesford answered as he folded up the message. “From an SS Obersturmführer in the Fifth SS Regiment and the Sturmbannführer in acting command of all SS
forces in Hereward.”

“From Ulrich? From ‘The Cat?’” Ansett asked with raised eyebrows.

“Yes,” Daylesford confirmed in confused surprise. “You sound as if you know him.”

“I do,” Ansett nodded. “He basically stopped a mob of SS thugs from beating me to death when I was a prisoner in SS torture cells.”

“By Jove!” Daylesford exclaimed. “That was lucky!”

“You could say that I owe him my life… in fact, I’m not exactly sure whose side he’s batting for.” Ansett furrowed his eyebrows as he spoke his thoughts aloud.
“It could very well be ours.”

“Don’t let your personal feelings cloud your judgement, Peter,” Daylesford warned. “In this game, all suspects are guilty until proven innocent; don’t forget that
he’s the enemy until proven otherwise.”

“Yes, sir,” Ansett said formally. “So it looks like the invasion is coming?”

“I’m afraid so,” Daylesford nodded sombrely. “The evidence points to a river crossing over the River Tweed at Berwick- upon-Tweed.”

“The question is: when?”

“Yes. That’s the six million dollar question. Peter, send a message to Percy to find out where and when the invasion will take place.”

“Yes, sir.”

Daylesford stood up, flattened down his trousers, straightened his tunic and put on his cap. “I’m off to tell Winston.”

“Will we be ready for them when they come, sir?” Ansett asked.

“We’d better be,” Daylesford replied grimly.

David Mitchell cannonballed into his big brother with such force and velocity that he almost knocked him off his feet.

“Whoa! Easy tiger!” Alan said with a smile as he gave his little brother a gigantic bear hug.

“Where have you been, Al? I’ve been worried sick!” David asked as he wiped away tears of joy with the back of his hands. “I thought that you were dead!”

“What do you mean?” Alan asked with genuine bewilderment. “I stayed with Sam and Alice during the Easter holidays. You know that, Davie, just as you stayed with the
Millers.”

“Yes, but after the St George’s Day Massacre and the destruction of the Specials I thought that you and Sam were dead. You could have phoned to let me know that you were all
right!”

“The destruction of the Specials? What on earth are you talking about?” Alan asked.

“After the Specials and the Police opened fire on the SS the Huns killed them all, even the wounded, and refused to take prisoners,” David explained.

Alan’s face drained of all colour and he turned as pale as the wall that he leaned against. “Are they still hunting down all of the surviving Specials?” he asked as he tried to
figure out how he could warn Sam. He felt sick as he realised that the Germans could have already arrested Sam and could already be on their way to arrest him.

“That’s unlikely, Al,” David shook his head. “If they haven’t arrested you already then I think that it’s unlikely that they still intend to arrest you in the
future.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the Records Room in Police Headquarters containing the names, addresses and personal details of both the Police and Specials burnt down last night. I think that you and Sam are
safe, big brother.” David put his hand on Alan’s shoulders.

“Thanks, Davie.” Alan put his hand on top of his brother’s and gave him a squeeze.

David paused before he spoke. “Al, Mr Ansett is missing.”

“Really?” Alan found it difficult to act as if he was surprised. He was certain that his little brother would not be fooled by his amateur dramatics.

David nodded his head. “Yes. That’s why I guess that we’re here.” David stretched both of his arms wide. “The whole of Cromwell House is gathered here, Al…
at least, what’s left of it. The word on the grapevine is that Ashworth is coming to speak to us.”

“I see.” Alan noticed for the first time that several familiar faces were missing.

“Fatty Arbuckle, George West and Del Boy Blake are all missing.”

“They were probably killed in the crossfire. Has anyone checked in the morgue? Ah, here’s movement…”

Harold Ashworth, the Rector of St John’s Academy, swept imperiously into the Cromwell Junior Common Room with a dramatic swish of his gown. A slim tweed-suited young man, who was similarly
clad in a cape, followed him. Ashworth strode purposefully to the bay window end of the room and turned around to face the housemates. He planted his legs apart and placed both of his clenched
fists on his hips. The House Matron, Mrs Abby Burgess, stood beside him.